Walk on wild side with Joey Arias and Raven O in Provincetown

Thursday

Aug 22, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 22, 2013 at 10:20 PM

The dressing room used by performers at Provincetown’s Art House is a matchbox of mirrors, makeup and sparkly black and white costumes tossed over hangers and chairs. After a three-night weekend, it’s time for Joey Arias and Raven O to unwind.

Susan Rand Brown

The dressing room used by performers at Provincetown’s Art House is a matchbox of mirrors, makeup and sparkly black and white costumes tossed over hangers and chairs. After a three-night weekend, it’s time for Joey Arias and Raven O to unwind.

Arias and Raven O’s performing persona is part Velvet Underground and part Rat Pack with a noir edge. In Las Vegas, they worked together in Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity, tag-teaming the emcee role in the groundbreaking adult circus cabaret. In Provincetown, this dynamic duo spend a generous hour on stage in their cabaret show “Wanted Live,” followed by a half hour in the lobby surrounded by fans who remember Arias and Raven O as a legendary after-hours act in Manhattan’s Bar d’O (named for the erotic French novel “The Story of O”).

This is their first season on stage together in a decade, and the charisma remains for Arias and Raven O, seasoned vocalists creating a buzz in Provincetown. Relaxed and playful, chatting up the audience, both still project a whiff of that “walk on the wild side,” as Lou Reed, veteran of Manhattan’s downtown scene, famously growled. It’s also fun to see them riffing on conventional male and female roles; gender transformation (a.k.a. drag) is part of their act, but not the main course.

Arias’s voice and stage persona re-create Billie Holiday as a black-gloved Lady Night, minus the white gardenia, and spicier. Arias grew up in North Carolina, and moved to Manhattan as fast as possible. Arias, a natural storyteller, got to know all sorts of characters. In conversation, he does spot-on imitations of friends like stage and film star Divine. While still a teenager, he was invited by Truman Capote and Andy Warhol to a drag Halloween party.

“I had to go as a character. I wore a latex top, heels and a big red wig … But I never liked drag. I always considered my doing it a mistake,” Arias says in a breathy voice in the dressing room, getting out of stiletto-high heels and black stockings. Off-stage, Arias projects a stylish androgyny: it’s who she is, no matter where or when.

“When I started singing my Billie Holiday songs but not in drag, I decided to integrate that singing star with the visual, and created something very elegant and dramatic,” Arias says. Halfway through “Wanted Live,” Arias sings the iconic “You’ve Changed” in the semi-darkness, gloved arms extended in diva position. It’s a hold-your-breath moment.

Born in Hawaii, Raven O started off as a professional dancer, directing his own shows. At 17 he won a dance contest in Hawaii and the chance to study performance in Manhattan. He was supposed to receive a round-trip ticket to NYC but the people running the contest could only afford to fly him one-way, and so he wound up a permanent New Yorker.

On stage at the Art House, silver-haired Raven O is equally glam in a black or white dinner jacket, chunky chains or a touch of leather, and projects a figure skater’s athleticism. He is a master of the Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash songbooks. His slow and soulful “Ring of Fire” reveals the bleakness Cash kept under wraps. “The public is used to performers who have to lip-sync. This is old-style cabaret, music-driven. We are singers, and take it seriously,” he says.

Taking off his stage jacket in the dressing room and settling on something sleeveless with glitter, Raven O, who spent his formative years racing outrigger canoes, describes his gender-bending character as influenced by his mother. “She’s a strong woman. I always thought, if I was a woman, this is the kind of woman I would be. She’s also very open-minded sexually. But now I just think of myself as a performer. I don’t really categorize myself.”

After “Wanted Live” ends Sept. 1, they head in different directions, Arias to perform in Paris and Raven O to Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where he lives. The pair hope to find a little performance space, “doing a show for the next 10 years like we did at Bar d’O,” Arias says, as Raven O flashes a broad smile.

When Edie, the current emcee for Zumanity, comes to town for Carnival, it’s possible the three will find time to make magic together on stage. This much is certain, come Aug. 22, Arias and Raven O will toss beads, sing, dance and greet fans from a pedi-cab as the parade snakes up Commercial Street. It’s been their first summer in town, and the warmth is contagious.